Axiom Verge / Axiom Verge 2

 I got both of these, among others from a Humble Bundle. I had been meaning to play this for a while, but never got around to it, but finally I did. Thank you Humble Bundle and Steamdeck.

Axiom Verge

It starts out extremely NES Metroid nostalgic. I really liked that. The progression was sensicle, and the backtracking wasn't too bad. At least for a while. Later on in the game, especially so if you are trying to go back to that area you know you can now explore, is very tedious and time consuming. The bosses were a mix of shoot them before I die (success eventually), oooh I found a spot they can't reach, but it takes a while to kill them (slow but steady), or holy crap why won't they die before I do (this only happened a few times, but man it sucks when it happens).

The story was alright. I liked how they added a reason to keep progressing through the game. The weapons could be sparse or frequent, so the bosses/save rooms were the main indicator that progress was happening.

The map was functional enough, and was the main thing to use to figure out where I had to go when a new gun/move/ability was unlocked allowing further progress

The one very nice thing in the game is the few key places in the game where you cross a point of no return, and you can't backtrack until you get the ability required to backtrack.

I will limit my gripes on this, since they took most of what was in this game, applied it to the second, and changed some things around. But I have to mention a few key gripes

Key gripes:

• Backtrack is very tedious
• There are some areas between save points that are absolutely brutal to traverse through. You do what you can to blitz to the next save point before you die.
• Even with the gated areas, it can still be confusing on where to go next. It's typically the place on the map where you couldn't finish exploring.
• Guns are nice, but once you find the one you like, I rarely have a need for others. Like the first weapon I used until I got a second one, then never went back. Same until I found the 2-3 weapons that worked well for area damage or ranged damage (I did not find all of the weapons).

But, there was some good

• The traversal mechanics of the game went much deeper than I expected. I was expecting a few moves like NES Metroid plus a few move, but they did a lot more. And then more than that. And not in the way you expect.
• When you die it throws you back to your last save point and SAVES the game. So you don't need to re-explore, re-acquire anything you got right before you died. Assuming the save point is not too far off, that's a really nice touch.
• Having a gun that worked well in specific areas was a fun way to explore the other guns and try them out.
• The movement

Axiom Verge 2

To be honest, after the grind of beating the first game I really didn't want to jump right into this, but I'm really glad that I did. They took everything they had in the first game and improved it in a few amazing ways.

There is an accessibility menu! If the game ever gets too hard, you can tune the enemy damage or your own damage until it feels better. That's absolutely amazing, and the only thing better is I didn't have to use it! I was able to beat any of the hard mobs eventually without feeling like I was being punished.

 The map allows you to scroll around, and zoom. And you can actually see the features of the world in the minimap, to help you remember! You can also mark a dot where you need to come back to later. I found this extremely useful in a metroidvania because there are very obvious places to come back to after you have the required ability (ledge too high, pit too wide, locked door, etc.). That's so easy to manage and use!

For wepaons there are melee and ranged weapons, not just guns. I found myself using melee for most of the game, but the option for ranged was always there when the enemies would stay out of reach.

There are ability points! You get ability points by finding urns in the game and can level yourself up how you see fit. I went for hacking ability to unlock some special gates first, and health. No regrets.

The movement of your character at first felt a bit slidy, but after getting further and further into the very smooth platforming I absolutely loved it. I think because the first game needed double D-pad taps to move faster versus dedicated buttons in the second game, that was much smoother on my hands.

Most of the big bosses are optional, and give you extra ability points to kill them, otherwise you can skip. I killed every one I found and loved the challenge. Reward of killing bosses is a more powerful player. Yes please.

The story on the second one is a lot more, and found throughout talking to people and notes scattered through the game. The history was a bit much, so I started to glosss over the notes. I understood why I was moving forward, so that was enough for me. Outside of an achievement, I didn't get extra value from finding the notes. Sometimes they were helpful in filling in a knowledge gap, but usually not.

Without going too spoilery, I will say that they almost completely avoided the backtracking burder the first game had. I felt I had to backtrack a very limited number of times, and when I did it was for a well-understood reason.

Quick list of gripes for the second game. These are very minor, and overall the game was extremely enjoyable. There is no good list because all of the writing above is how good it was.

* Very late in the game, it can be a bit confusing on how to get to your objective. BUT, they put an indicator on the map, so keep trying things
* Later ability points in the game can lose impact. Once I maxed out hacking, and health, the rest could be put into anything really. I found myself using melee attacks a lot, so I boosted those

I ended up beating the second game in a single day. I was really good. I highly recommend it. There are some tie ins to the first game, so while you could play it without the first you might miss some things.

The Fall

Finished this with our games group.

Didn't mind the point and click adventure portion of this, although the spacing made me look up things to avoid some tedious back and forth a few times.

The gun fighting mechanics were a nice addition. Still, it would have been nice to see more examples of using your gun to solve things in the environment in addition to the usual use-inventory-item-on-thing solution.

The platforming mechanics felt clunky, but effective enough to vary the otherwise simple traversal methods (walk left/right, ladder, elevator).

Finding things with your flashlight made it easy to miss things. This was my common reason to go online to see what small object I did not notice while waving my flashlight up and down in hopes of finding interaction points. This was potentially a tricky issue to solve when 3 interaction points are very close to one another.

The visual style and ambient audio helped set the distopian theme. It felts like the ambient audio trailed off pretty early. The voice acting was solid throughout. Having a very dark color, it made screenshots difficult to take.

The ending was enjoyable, but I'm not sure where the next episode could go. Maybe there's more to this than they've revealed.

Firewatch

Picked this up for the video game of the month club thing we're doing at work.

The controls are intuitive, the graphics decent, and the story was compelling enough to keep playing.

I was surprised how well you could traverse the world being tied directly to the nav mesh -- no jumping allowed. It worked, and only when you got stuck on a tree did it feel even slightly awkward. I really enjoyed the mobility mechanics they used, it added physicality to your traversal in the world -- at least for the first time through a new area.

The voice narration was a very strong point, and it was great to see the decisions or indecision being responded to later on down the line. I didn't need branching story/dialogue to feel my choices were observed. I don't think my choices actually mattered in the overall story though. I should check on that later.

I'd have to recommend this game, if only because it felt like a story driven narrative done in a way I haven't seen before. It was an enjoyable experience, and only took maybe 6 hours to get through.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

My brother picked up this game for me. We both had originally played it on GameCube, but I bowed out before he got past the Earth and Wind temple (I think).

Recently, I haven't had as much time to play games. Between work, attempt at getting sleep vs waking toddler, there's just not that much free time. With that, I think I've become a little angry at any type of grindy game mechanic. That is -- any mechanic that solely requires me to spend a minimum amount of time to get past.

While writing this review, I found myself getting quite annoyed at a few things in particular, and only when I stepped back and looked at it, did I allow myself to see it for what it was. A normal game mechanic, that used the rules of the game, but required some amount of time to get past.

Enter the wind and earth templates. Where you have a companion that helps you get through a dungeon. That's neat! You have to use your wind waker to play the control melody to switch to controlling the companion so you can solve puzzles as a team. Also neat! So when I had to constantly switch between myself and someone else, then back, then re-position, then back, etc. I felt that this was just a time grind. It kind of was, but it was also a neat game mechanic that kept me in the game world, while allowing me to do something new and unique.

There were some really annoying parts of the game, that even upon stepping back and re-evaluating seemed kind of awful. I'm not going to bullet list these, because I think they're worth explaining in detail.

The target locking mechanic is horrible. The enemies you absolutely need to target lock, seem to constantly disappear from target lock. Also, target locking uses character facing, instead of using camera facing. That's just inane, I'm usually running away from the thing I want to switch to locked on camera, so I can switch to strafing around it, but without turning my character into incoming danger, the game does not allow me to go into target lock. Similarly, if I switch to any aimed item (bow, hookshot, etc.) then it will assume that my facing direction is the direction I want to shoot. It should be auto facing the camera. I understand this could easily be fixed by a game option, but this option does not exist. Lastly, if I hit the target lock button, and don't have anything valid to go into target lock mode, please give me a game option to disable whipping the camera around so that I am now likely facing the opposite direction of the incoming danger. Dark Souls and other games are also guilty of this last one. Just add a game option please!

While on the topic of target locking, this also made some bosses insanely frustrating. Particular target prioritisation on things you don't need to shoot vs things you do. In particular any enemy that spawns other enemies is usually really far off and extremely difficult to get target lock on.

While there are a few things this game does infuriatingly wrong, this game is also really great.

One of the mechanics that I had forgotten was mapping the islands by feeding the fish. This was due to playing this in few hour chunks, separated by days between. While this feels immediately grindy at first, it also comes across in two other mechanics that work great. The first is that it allows you to see where you have not been. If I've mapped a square, then I've likely been to the island, or maybe I wait to map the island. Secondly, when you map the island, the fish gives you a tip about something in the world that you might not have been able to figure out without the tip. This is a great way of having hidden gems in the game, and allow the player to get access to them without going to a guide.

The items, and pacing of the game was pretty good as well. I think I would have found the wind direction changing to be much more tedious if I didn't beeline for the quick sail as soon as possible, but with that, the speed of getting around felt great.

The money mechanics in the game felt a little trivial. For the most part I was either completely full on money, or completely out of money. Feast or famine. There was almost no in-between. And while that's kinda dis-engaging, it's interesting to think about how this system worked itself out in the first Zelda. When you shot an array, you lost 1 rupee. That works, monsters already drop rupees, I have a rupee UI indicator already to boot. So that's kind nice.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable game, I just wish I had more dedicated time to play it. On the other hand, it would be nice to have games in more digestible chunks, since I don't have the large blocks of time anymore. With Windwaker HD, I think they did a pretty good job of allowing me to bite of chunks of the game until it was completed

Dark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel

So, the DLC starts out quite a bit like the Painted World of Ariamis from Dark Souls. I absolutely love the references, just like they had the throwback to Anor Londo.

I played it with my endgame character, level 95. I didn't get a single level the entire run.

Boss boss fights were epic, and really rewarding to beat. We got a more circular lore, and a PvP arena, woot!

It probably took me a solid 8 hours to beat the whole thing. I didn't use a guide until I beat both bosses, but I might have talked to Luke... and brought in a couple of summons... I didn't manage to get any boss fighting screenshots, because I was usually dying repeatedly.

Overall really enjoyed it! Sorry for the lack of epic words, this is the second game I managed to beat on my birthday.

AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake)

So I really love metroidvania games. They're amazing.

When I picked this up, I was super excited to play a Metroid game I missed, but without having to play on the old game boy system. In my brashness, I choose to play on the hard difficulty. This was a mistake.

It was brutally hard. Like - backtrack to a save point every time you kill any boss-like creature, so that you don't utterly die to the second one - hard.

The entire game is setup like spokes off an elevator. You have central saves, a bunch of branches with boss creatures to kill, then when they're all killed the elevator mechanic in the middle lets you go further down. All the while you're getting new powers, and equipment, and the E tanks. The E tanks are much more scarce than any other Metroid game I recall.

Enemies hit really hard on the hard difficulty. You will lose half an E tank in 1-2 hits from a normal enemy. By the time you get to that really hard boss, that is placed strategically 10 screens away from the closest save point, you will lose your mind.

One minor relief is that the death/reload time is pretty quick.

Most of the bosses I ended up having to kill in a somewhat cheesy way. Kneel in a corner and shoot in a locked upward angle in a spammy fashion until the tender un-armored underbelly is destroyed. Later on this is replaced by the trusty hide in a tiny hole, pop out for a strategic sucker missile shot, go back to hole. this last strategy held for quite some time.

For boss fights, you need to learn the tells of when/what attacks are coming, and you need to take very strong advantage of the portion of the boss fight where you are expected to shoot something that is not the boss to potentially get your life/missiles topped back up. If you neglect this, you will die.

I mostly collected things that were obvious on the map.

She is the worst. 10+ screens from the save point. Hits like a truck. Very little maneuvering room.

Aarklash Legacy

I did not end up finishing this game. I absolutely think this is worth buying and playing.

This game plays a bit like a MOBA. You have four playable characters, with four unique skills each. Some play DPS, healer/support, and tank roles, or a bit of a mix.

Each combat is difficult, and requires you to play tactically for at least the first half of the fight.

The things that this game did specifically well.
* Brilliant choice to style this like a RTS MOBA as far as camera, controls, and feel

** You can issue a queue of actions to an ally

** You can pause and inspect any enemy, which is critical to surviving

* The game allows you to respec a character anytime you are not in combat. This removed analysis paralysis and allowed exploration of builds and team options

* Each enemy had unique abilities with tweakable values (stun duration, distance, cast time, etc.)
* Enemies required you to take them down tactically. If you ignored their tell, then they would heavily punish you. You can also interrupt abilities, and many times have to do this to win.
* The optional boss fights were very rewarding and quite difficult
* Progressing through the story forced you to try out new party compositions and ability pairings
* Non-standard healing abilities. I loved seeing healing abilities that were more than just heal for X amount, or heal over time. The mechanics in this game were stunning.

The pretty good, but could have been better
* The UI that you needed to use to dig into which enemy had which ability was a bit tedious
* After a certain point, you can pick your own team and you'll likely never change it up once you have something that works
* The puzzles in the game were interesting, but sometimes seemed to be more tedious than clever. It also didn't feel like it was necessary.

* The voice acting was fine, but the story line just didn't engage me

The one thing they did that could be improved was equipment. Enemies drop random equipment of a normal, magical, rare variety. Most of the time it's crap, and you throw it ino the equipment grinder that will produce an ultra rare version. Basically you're just rolling the dice over and over until you get the best of the various state (+heal is great for healers, +physical damage is not typically). I ended up save scumming this a lot to abuse getting the best equipment, but in the end it wasn't a huge difference. It almost felt like an entire system that could have just been left out.

The reason I didn't finish the game primarily was that I wasn't engaged enough with the puzzles and story to continue. I absolutely loved the combat, abilities, and character classes they created. Once I had my ideal party, the fights just got a bit repetitive. Perhaps the UI improvements would have held my attention longer, but I doubt it. Still a great game!

PS: I have no idea how I don't have any screenshots for this game.

Hatoful Boyfriend

It's our game of the month!

I joined the student council, then workedon math and social skills. Preferring the build of intelligence/charisma over endurance.

Quickly became Vice Pres of student council. Possibly too easily...

Here are my notes about the various characters, so I don't lose track:
Hiyoko Tosaka - yourself
Shuu Iwamine - creapy Doctor
Anghel Higure ??? - listed on the wiki, but never met them
Kazuaki Nanaki - teacher that dozes off
Ryouta Kawara - friend that gets stomach aches easily
Nageki Fujishiro - freshman with no manners that likes books
Sakuya Le Bel Shirgane - pres of student council, stuck up
Yuuya Sakazaki - ladies man, brother of Sakuya, secret past
San (Okosan) - crazy fast bird that loves pudding too much
Koshiba Azami - scooter sparrow, sells takoyaki - lost someone
Urushihara Kenzaburou - parkeet cafe owner

At the end of sophomore year there was a touching exchange with Kazuaki about being in love with him. It was a bit jarring because I don't remember making any decisions in his direction. I'm pretty sure I had a heavy leaning toward Sakuya... so that's a bit jarring. It was a touching and inspiring conversation nonetheless, much like many revelations in an Anime drama, but still out of place.

Oh, that was the end. Alright then.

Good enough game, very similar to a typical anime drama which I love. Not sure how the choices matter, so I should probably go look that up, or maybe it's better not knowing...

Dark Souls 3

I had an entire gaming week to myself. I figured I'd play this or that, dig into my crazy long list of Humble Bundle games, or play on console for a bit... I ended up spending the entire chunk of my time on Dark Souls 3. It consumed my life day and night and even dug into my sleeping time. 52 hours later, I think I'm done. I have 77% achievements, and I did not focus on achievements at all. I focused on bosses and exploring areas.

The game started out as I would expect any Dark Souls game with a very weak character and learning the ins/outs of movement and combat. The first boss was a bit of a challenge but after a few attempts I was through him and on to the rest of the game. They start you off pretty early with the ability to warp to any area, similar to Dark Souls 2, which is nice.

I found weapon upgrading to be a lot slower than Dark Souls 2 or Dark Souls 1. It was acceptable overall because I was still making upgrades as I went through the game, with very obvious tiers based on your specific area you were at. For example, in one specific area I would find materials for upgrading from +4 to +7, and enemies dropping materials for upgrading from +1 to +3. It did a good job of setting expectations on what level of upgrades they thought you would have, or could have at any point in the game. I ended up levelling a short fire sword for most of the game until I found a weapon that was able to do enough damage to replace it. A few fire resistant areas made this a bit difficult, but not disproportionately to other difficulties in a souls game..

Contrary to previous games, in Dark Souls 3 you use embers to restore your "humanity". When you are human, you have extra life, can summon others, and can be invaded. Contrary to Dark Souls 2, there is no penalty for dying repeatedly. I'd say this is a vast improvement for the less hardcore players.

Boss fights were quite varied, and I really enjoyed the mix. This is a welcome change from previous titles, that were typically painful learning exercises on enemy movement/attack patterns. If a specific boss was too difficult, I would summon in someone to help bring some damage (eg: against a fire resistant boss). When you bring someone in, it also increases the boss' life, so make sure they're pulling their own weight! A few times I had people coming in to help with the boss only to immediately die. This leaves me with a powered up boss and no help.

Finding new weapons and armor was enjoyable, but really loved finding rings. You find a few early on, and before long you have all four ring slots filled. By mid game, you're making decisions on which rings to use based on your play style. I also really liked some of the new ring ideas, and that the staple rings from earlier games had a comeback (cloranthy, red tearstone, etc.). I found out later that there are +1 and +2 versions of rings similar to Dark Souls 2, but you will only find those in New Game+.

There were few key differences between the Dark Souls games that I'd like to go into. Some of those were good decisions or just different decisions or sometimes poor decisions but overall it was interesting to see the comparisons when playing through the three different games. They also peppered in some Bloodborne things, but I haven't played that game to completion yet, so I may not have seen all the inclusions.

Chest Destruction

As far as I remember, chests could only be destroyed in Dark Souls 2, and I'm glad they removed that in Dark Souls 3. Having your precious treasure destroyed and replaced by rubbish was a horrible, horrible feeling. I know this de-emphasizes mimic fear, but there has to be a better way. Also, you can always tell a mimic by minor changes to the model/appearance.

Weapon/Upgrade Pacing

Dark Souls 3 feels the slowest at weapon progression. Whereas Dark Souls 1 put the blacksmith a bit into the game, this made you decide on a weapon that worked well for you, then allowed you to upgrade it. In Dark Souls 2, you get upgrades early on, and it scales quite well for the game. Dark Souls 3 felt the slowest, as you would typically have your main weapon at the highest tier possible, and all other weapons one tier below that. It felt like I really didn't have a choice once I started levelling a weapon, but at the same time I did well for most of the game with a fire short sword.

Weapon Upgrade Options

The upgrade options in Dark Souls 3 seem to be the best overall. Your scaling of a weapon is independent of what it's infused with, and you can remove the infusion if you change your mind. The scaling of the weapons are now changed based on infusions, similar to Dark Souls 1. My main complaint is that you don't upgrade more than two weapons fully until the end of the game.

Stat Screens

Dark Souls 3 finally adds the ability for you to see a full comparison when chaging your equipment. If you click the right thumb stick (R3) then you can get a detailed breakdown on what each change in equipment will do. It's a bit odd then, that poise damage is not shown in the screens which Dark Souls 2 included.

Carried Items

Like Bloodborne, you can only carry so many usable items with you at a time. Eg: 99 arrows of a specific typre, with another 99 in the bank. This was to prevent you from just bringing 100's of items into the game, and spamming your way through it like you could in previous Dark Souls games.

NPCs have improved in the direction that Dark Souls 2 was taking them. They have more interactions out in the environment, more diverse quest lines. They usually join you back in your base at some point, but only some of them have anchor spots there.

NPCs in Dark Souls 1 usually involve finding someone and talking to them enough times to have them go back to the main hub area. A similar route was taken in Dark Souls 2 with a few other interactions out in the field. Dark Souls 3 takes this to a new level of involvement. They are people you need to check in on, bring quest items to, purchase things from, and talk to for additional lore.

I really enjoyed my time playing Dark Souls 3. I might go back into it when DLC comes out, but I don't think I'll be starting another character or delving into New Game+. Time is limited, and there are other things to see.




The fabled "Battle Pope". A remarkable amount of poise for the light weight.


For a brief time, I was using the silver knight armor. I looked awesome, but it was heavy.


Who needs armor when you have a shield like this? Also, I can't wear armor with a shield like this...

Dark Souls 2: Sins of the First Scholar

Really good game. It starts you out with a new character, so it took a while to remember how much my character sucks, since the last time I was playing was with a decked out Dark Souls 1 character. I played the Sins of the First Scholar version, but didn't really get into the DLC.

The staggering you do from hits initially, is really, really huge. I don't remember it being that bad in DS1.

You can also heavily stagger enemies, which is nice. The fire longsword has a huge stagger on it's thrust attack. I've been powering through the game with that.

Most of the bosses in this game, I just pulled in a few summoned allies and wiped the floor with them.

A few terrible areas, but nothing felt as terrible as The Depths in DS1.
* Black Gulch sucked for a bit, but was over relatively quickly.
* Shrine of Amana was just cheap, so I had to out-cheap it by spending all my souls on Dex and bow upgrades. Then sniping spell casters in the face from a distance. At least I had some time to level up and build my gear for this one.
* No-Man's Wharf confused me for a bit, until I discovered the short cut added in SotFS

I ended up joining the Rat King Covenant, mostly out of convenience, and then I found out they have an awesome ring you get (Ring of Fog). I could never grind enough rat tails to get it, but the notion I might someday have it was nice.

The torch system was neat, but a little too special case. You could like pyres along the way to various areas, which allowed you to relight your torch at that point. It was mostly used in the game as an "I've been here" reminder, and very little as an actual game mechanic. There was maybe one area where it helped me see things... I don't recall.

The added ability to respec your character, in case you wasted points in attributes that you didn't really want after all. I burned my first respec to change my strength/dex allocations into more stamina and health. Having the fire sword early and upgrading throughout the game meant I didn't need much strength/dex early on. I tried an intelligence build later on, but used another soul vessel to reverse that.

The upgrading of weapons seemed to go much slower than DS1, but it did come much earlier than DS1, so I think it was better overall.

I don't remember being able to destroy the chests in DS1, but in DS2 you absolutely can destroy them. Doing so, replaces their contents with rubbish. This is especially frustrating when an enemy destroys the chest because you were fighting around them at a poor time. This is further made worse by the game auto-saving aggressively, which is terrible when those chests break. As a rule of thumb, I started shield bashing chests to check, because it didn't do enough damage to destroy them. I also save scummed liberally... If you play online, there are usually lots of warning signs around mimics. Only one time did the signs wait to load in until I was already being eaten...

Having to go back to town to level up was a huge pain, compared to levelling up at any bonfire. The warping allowed from the start was nice, but there was a charm to DS1 where your routes would loop back on themselves and you could see the interconnectivity of the game. Warping is still awesomely convenient.

The hollowing process of losing a portion of your maximum health kinda sucked, but it forced you to either use up a ring slot to reduce that reduction per death to cap you at 80% instead of a horrible 50%, or you could use a human effigy to get your humanity and max health back.

I didn't get invaded that often in the game, and had much better positive interactions with summoning other people to help with fights.

Overall the game felt much more accessible than the first.

Finishing the game was good, and it felt nice to complete the story.

Overall I enjoyed the game, and had a great time playing it. My friend Luke did help quite a bit, but I also was able to take on huge chunks without his assistance/direction.






This is how I looked for most of the early to mid game. It's a heavy armor set, and helped me to not die. Still rockin' the fire sword.



This is how I looked for the later parts of the game. Each piece comes with a nice bonus, and it's pretty light weight. Yep, still fire sword.

Undertale

Undertale is a mini twist on traditional RPGs. Bit of a throwback to the old NES days basic RPGs with basic commands.

Some of the scenes that the game does are quite brilliant. You have a choice even when you think you're just watching something.

The art style was not appealing when I first saw the game, and no amount of screenshots would make me want to buy it. But... you tend to get over it then you realize how interesting indeed they make it in various areas.

The music was quite well done. A hint of 8-bit nostalgia, but never dull.

I played a pacifist play through but you can also go through an attack people normally. I wasn't that interested in doing a traditional play through. In a pacifist playthrough, you have to learn the enemies and beat them without killing them. It rewards zero EXP, but you get what seems to be the full money amount. I had quite a bit of money for most of the game.

I got stalled out on what looked like the last boss. It was just too tough to do all the dodging, and I didn't feel like grinding up healing items -- I wasted all of my money on a previous boss that seemed like paying for a debt was the "pacifist option", I was wrong and utterly broke due to that mistake.

I gave up and just started watching the rest of the game on YouTube. It was ridiculously difficult bullet hell game for quite some time. I'm glad I didn't bother. I didn't mind the meta gaming that was done, but going full bullet hell was too much for me to get through.

Also, the fights after what I thought was the last boss will haunt my dreams forever.

I feel like there were a lot of great take-aways from this game, but it was very difficult to finish. I'd recommend on picking it up just to see how they did the pacifist options to fights. It's slightly different per enemy, so it's a neat way of making you learn the enemies more than just sacks of hit points.

Infamous: Second Son

I had only played the first inFamous on PS2 before this, but this game was really good. I read some of the wiki information to see if there's anything I should know, and if you didn't do that, you'd still be fine.

The story is solid, with meaningful and realistic characters. You're still given the "good or evil" decisions in the game, but I could actually see myself choosing the "evil" option for legitimate reasons that do not involve being a psychopath. I still choose the "good" option, because I usually don't want to see how dark something can go... also the powers for good were kinda nice (infinite speed running anyone?!) Also, it feels better and more impactful to get power-ups that let you slam bad guys into prone positions and incapacitate them, versus killing them faster/easier.

The powers were all tailored around the basic forms of combat. Since I am absolutely terrible at aiming on consoles, I opted for powers that let me shoot in general directions, then finish the take down with melee. This worked out quite well for most of the game.

The game has easy, normal, and hard difficulties. I managed to beat the game on normal, but it was extremely tough at some parts. Remember the part about being terrible at aiming on consoles? This is likely why.

The power-ups are much easier to get in this one than the first one. In the first game, you had to scale buildings and complete mini-quests. In Second Son, you have to find some armored vans surrounded by guards, and take out the van. When you do, you get a section of the city unlocked, and you get 5+ shards (upgrade points) scattered around the destroyed van. It's quite the improvement.

The interactivity in the game is almost too good. I constantly found my character trying to rail-run on edges, or pull himself onto ledges all the time. Since you will be wanting to do this for 99% of the cases, it's fine. It does seem out of place sometimes though.

The writing and voice acting was really good. You feel the connection you have with your family, and you are constantly at odds with your police officer brother. The character models were also really realistic looking, which was great to see a game going that direction.

The boss fights were incredibly hard on normal difficulty. I should have switched to easy. Seriously.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game. I did not dig that far into side quests aside from destroying vans for power-ups. I don't really feel like I missed anything, and with my limited time for playing games, I think this game was time well spent.

Titan Souls

I picked this up on PS Vita, after trying the demo but not being overly impressed. I suppose the "maybe this could somewhat be like Shadows of the Colossus" sucked me in. I was wrong, and it was painful to complete.

The game is punishing. There are checkpoints, but you feel the delay every time you die. 3 seconds of watching the boss continue to murder your already dead corpse, 10 seconds of literally fade to black, 2 seconds of respawn animation, and another 10-20 seconds getting back to the boss fight. This adds up when you die over 100 times in a game.

I completed the game in around 4 hours, plus some change on the last boss who happened after the timer stopped. It started okay, with bosses who were tough, but not unfair. I had a chance to learn their tells and patterns without insta-dying. I still died, but made progress every 5 minutes or so, killing a new titan. These were well designed fights. Later on, there are bosses who are just outright unfair -- 30+ minutes spent trying to get that perfectly aimed cross-room shot in the 2 frames of boss vulnerability.

They did their best to try to elude to how to beat a boss by subtle hints or limiting what you can do. For instance, the Yeti boss gives you zero time to react or plan for the next attack with a pull back shot, and nothing else to shoot. You just have to hit him in his 3 frame of vulnerability at the right time.

As I went to kill the harmless titan, there was a small glimmer of hope that I would get some exposition on why I'm killing these titans. Nope, nothing else is ever told. It's like an incomplete story. This was the big draw of Shadows of the Colossus. I understood that exploration was not going to happen in Titan Souls, but the complete lack of story is a gaping hole. Give me a story I can skip if I don't care, but don't leave it out completely.

Would I recommend playing this game? Not really. It was fun for what it was, but it was brutally difficult and I feel my time could have been better spent doing something else. Almost anything else.

The good things that came of this, was having a game to play on my PS Vita, and I got to update my blog.

Here's a good guide in case you get stuck. I tried not to use it, but eventually used it more and more as I didn't want to spend respawn time slowly figuring out tells, or if I was just barely missing the 2 frames of vulnerability on a boss.

Super Time Force Ultra

Super Time Force Ultra is a throwback to Contra, with more verticality and exploration to its levels. The trick it adds, is the ability to rewind time anytime you want, or on death, and spawn in a teammate to help complete the level.

There are extra characters to unlock by saving them before they die, similar to how you can save your own teammates. You can also get some bonus characters by gathering enough collectibles in the levels. All characters are unique, but I found some to be vastly more powerful or useful than others. The rocket launcher and samurai sword guys were on my solid GOTO list. Rockets for damage, sword to speed clearing.

Each stage gives you a set amount of time to complete it before you die, so you have to be quick. So long as you can get to the boss with about 10-15 seconds to spare, you can win. Picking up time boosts on the ways helps.

I really enjoyed playing this in my spare time, or with a big chunk of plane/airport time. Really good game.

The Last of Us

I've been meaning to play this for a while, and finally got some time to get to it. It was recommended by some friends at work, if I wanted to avoid too much grind. I played it on PS3.

I always figured this was a post-apocalyptic game, with emphasis on survival/scavenging. There are also some zombie-type aspects to it.

First off, the game looks amazing. Like really amazing. The models, faces, mannerisms, and animations are all fantastic. Then add solid VO, and the cutscenes are just stunning.

The story is amazing, and the characters are believable, with their own motivations guiding their actions.

The game's gives you an objective that you're going for even though it's always going to be a difficult path to get to that single objective. It does keep things focus though which is really nice. It also gives you a hint if you stick around in a place for too long, because you don't know where to go or forgot.

The gameplay was clear and clean. It's a stealth game until you're spotted, then it's a cover based shooter, or you could just book it and run for the next objective. I had to book it a few times, and it's nice it's an option. It also was nice to see that quite a few cutscenes were done with in-game graphics, versus watching a movie. And with that, you usually at some if not full control over your character. I like that only take control away when they have to.

The controls can take a bit of time to get back into, if you step away for a week (or two), but they make sense.

Throughout the game you can upgrade weapons at workbenches. You get parts for upgrading throughout the game, and you get an upgrade tool at specific spots, to allow unlocking various levels of upgrades. You can also see from this that there are 5 levels of upgrades, so you know you have a good chunk of the game left when you only have 1-2 upgrade tools. At first I found the bow to be very weak, but once you upgrade it, it's amazing. It's a ranged silent take down weapon. Also, the target size for a head shot is forgiving. Also, always carry a full health shiv for unlocking rooms, their contents is worth the minor spend.

I also enjoyed the game much more when I found the lock on option, because I am terrible at aiming a reticle on any console. In this game, you really can't afford to just waste bullets with misses.

A few things I would change:

* Add a continue button screen to the end of loading a game. It takes long enough, and not all loaded games will take you to a safe place

* Make enemies consistently drop ammo. Possibly just on easy difficulty? They drop ammo consistently near the end, but not throughout. Arrows can sometimes be retrieved from a corpse, but not always. Missing and hitting a wall will break the arrow.

* Possibly have an option for how long to wait before giving the hint? There were a few places I was clueless and needed the hint sooner, or missed the dialog hint.

Final Fantasy X-2 HD

I probably started playing originally on PS2 about 5 years ago, which was quite a few years after I purchased it. I just never had the time.
I purchased the HD remake on PS Vita, and I can now play it in bed, during lunch breaks, etc.

The usually turn based combat got a bit more active in this one. Attacks can push back an enemies attack (like a stagger) and you can combo your attacks for more damage if you can time them to hit close to one another.

I also love bringing classes back, this time in the form of dress sphere changes. You can swap mid-combat as long as they're in the grid you're equipped with.

The class levelling system is pretty good, with some holes in a few places. Levelling a warrior is painfully slow, levelling a thief is tedious, levelling a black mage takes a lot of mana, and levelling a white mage is astonishingly easy (just auto-heal every turn). You get a class skill point every time you use an ability basically. You also get a point or two on kills.

The graphics were really good for the Vita, and the voice acting was a bit better than FFX.

I'd say the story was overall weaker than FFX, but I did like Paine.

As per the usual, you can grind to your hearts content, and then the rest of the game will be much easier. The addition of the fiend arena makes this much faster and easier. It's also a great way to get items, gil and level your classes.

Here are a few notes I had while playing the game:

As soon as I found out there was a Charm Bangle. I bee-lined for it. I'm shocked at how close it was to the beginning of the game. Shocked. This helped drastically reduce the tediousness associated with exploring areas for chests and alternate paths.

One of the best classes is Lady Luck. It has the awesome abilities of auto-critical hits, doubling experience, doubling gil, and doubling items. This also stacks if you have more than one in a group. Broken. You have to beat Shinra for this in the sphere break tournament. If you don't, he just runs off with it and says something about being "just a kid." What a D-bag.

Holy crap. Chapter 4 is almost nothing but watching these darn cameras and painstakingly waiting for someone to talk to them for some period of time, which is hard to tell when it's over for most of them. I think I need this for the mascot sphere or I would have skipped this. Also, I had a few hours to burn on a plane, so this was slightly less terrible to do.

Chapter 5 is starting better. There are some length puzzles to be done. Gathering Cactuar's is going to be quite tedious. I spent quite a bit of time trying to get close to 100% story completion, but seriously lost my steam halfway through Chapter 5. I finally got the Catnip accessory and Mascot dress sphere. After that, I was ready to just mark this as done.

This game is extremely crashy. I crashed quite often, and also ran into an issue where combat was stuck in wait mode, with no one acting. So I had to force close it. I sent every crash report I could.

The team

One of the harder bosses in the game. I still had a hard time beating it. Lots of phoenix downs were used.

My son once posed like this. It was just as awkward...

Nostalgia... so smelly...

Hells to the yes.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Dragon Age: Inquisition is an amazing game. The story is solid, the fights are fun, the abilities are varied enough to enjoy, but not so much that they fade to obscurity (like in DA:O). BioWare excelled again at writing characters that are believable, interesting, and intelligent. They set the bar for that in video games.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game, but spent the better part of a year completing it. Below is not a well-written review, but a hodge podge of thoughts, notes, and other things I wrote over the span of a year while I played it. Hope it is at least partly coherent



The fade rift in Hinterlands, is not killable with a party at level 3. Feels very out of place. Came back to that damn rift in the Hinterlands at level 6. Still not doable. The mobs are level 12 (thanks tac cam!), and brutal. Why did they put this so close to a spot I cross all the time?!

As for the party members. Solas seems even enough at the start, but then the snooty-ness comes out. And not in a good way.

Sera is a mischief maker, to no end. She's fun enough, but not deep. She doesn't want to be, and pushing it frustrates her.

Varric is the same as Varric from DA2. Sneaky, charismatic, fun-loving, and an all around awesome bro.

Cassandra starts out as you remember her from DA2. Very severe, very focused. As you get to know her, you chip away some of her armor. The story points between her and Varric are good. It makes her feel more human.

Cole is scary. Not horror scary, mysterious scary. Something is sad and dark in there and I want to know more. I love that people just don't notice him.

Blackwall has yet to join my party - TODO.

Iron Bull is smart, much smarter than I thought. I haven't bantered with him much because I've always needed a tanky character and Cassandra fit the romance-able tank role (*shakes fist at Avaline*). His conversations are good though - he's smart. It makes sense why and how he runs the mercenaries he does.

Vivienne is the personification of snooty-ness, in a shell of unbreakable mage will. She's awesome. I also loved that using the direct romance options are immediately shut down in an air of pity, like "No dear, I don't think so."

For the war table people, Cullen is the typical brilliant strategist, without going too overboard with the whole if-I-hit-it-with-my-sword-maybe-it-will-die schtick.

Lelianna comes back from DA:O, with more mystery than before. She's a powerful ally, and you quickly see that having her on your side is a really good thing.

I couldn't save Maneave in the fires, so Helisma replaced her. Hmm...



Starting Jaws of Hakkon at level 11 (it recommended around level 20). Any enemies would one shot me, so I had to be sneaky/careful/abuse the game. First scripted encounter at a boat man's place was un-winnable, but stealthing up to the group then running into a house somehow despawned them. Talking to the boat man and turning in a quest in the main hub boosted my group to level 13. A few more quests later, I'm level 15 and able to kill things. Also the mod I could buy for Bianca helped a ton with the DPS problem.

Carrying a veilfire torch into a cinematic is kinda neat. No one questioned why I was holding it, it was just there. Does that count as player choice? If so, I don't think they intended it...

Unique enemy mobs were a great addition. It feels like I've accomplished something when I kill them.

Just lost 2 hours of game progress because I tried to beat Jaws of Hakkon with a level 17 group. Unfortunately that's one level shy of getting a decent gear upgrade. Most of my DPS is just from Varric, with his no-level-requirements upgrades to Bianca. Dang it. No, I did not want to switch to casual -- I can finish this game on normal!

So I flipped back the main story line. Finishing up the quests from Adamant on. It didn't take too long. I short-cut it quite a bit by just buying my power from the scrolls merchant in Skyhold. I would have loved to spend more time on sidequests, and playing more content, but I don't have the time.

I finished up the remainder crit path, and finally beat the last boss. It was enjoyable, the fights were tough enough, but not overly. My party was quite overpowered with their Jaws of Hakkon level ~20 equipment.


I want to go back and play more side quests, but there are other things in the game queue to be beaten. Until then, it has been a pleasure old friend. I'll still be debugging you at work, so we'll have that for a while longer...

Transistor

Picked this up because it's from the team that did Bastion.

The art is gorgeous, and frames the story/combat/background perfectly.

The controls and gameplay are fluid. The combat seamlessly blends into your normal exploration, while still having small hints of RPG throwbacks. For instance, an area seals off around you, your action bar become available, etc.

The main character walks a bit slow, but it's the right pace for the fights. It's still slow for exploration, but the game is quite linear overall.

The voice over carries the story in a well paced manner -- giving you a bit of exposition as you need it, but never overwhelming you. Very well done. The OVC terminals are also a neat way to show her thoughts and emotions without having her speak. It's clever, also well-paced, and immersive.

The function system is solid. It almost requires a bit of time to make sure you know how they work, and how to optimize them. They give you a testing room to test out combinations, which is nice. There's also a testing ground in the same area that challenges you in a puzzle to kill enemies under a certain time, kill enemies in one turn, or survive. I loved this, but it was tough at times.

Functions can be equipped to sockets in the Transistor (A, B, X, Y slots). Functions can be equipped directly to a slot, as an active command, or they can be equipped into an upgrade slot of an active command. They can also be equipped to a passive slot, so with just a few functions, you already have a lot of combinations to choose from! Each function costs between 1 and 4 memory to equip, so you'll have to make a choice on what to keep pretty early on.

When you level up, you get to pick a new function from a choice of 2. Then you choose more memory, an additional upgrade slot, or an additional passive slot. Finally you choose a new limiter, which you can activate to make the game more challenging, but also give you more experience per fight. I played the majority of the game with most limiters on, but I avoided getting any limiters that reduced my total memory.

Dying doesn't end the game, it breaks one of your functions. You get to continue the fight after that, but you're going to be in much worse shape. On top of that, if you manage to beat the fight, you have to get to 2 more checkpoints before the function is restored. I think it was their intention to force you to try out new abilities. The challenge rooms were a good way to help me try out new abilities and see new combinations -- this was just frustrating.

On a minor positive note, I've learned from experience it never removes your last damaging function. If you happen to have an off-hitting function though, it will almost always destroy the main one... with the 2 upgrades... that was doing 99% of the damage for you...

Things I loved:
* When you boot the game, it immediately continues your game. No title menu, no choice selectoin, just GO.
* The art, controls, dialogue are awesome
*  The functions are well thought out, and fun to toy around with combinations
* There is new game plus

Things I "did not love"
* The above notes about the consequences of dying. I basically just restarted from checkpoint when something broke
* Walking around was a bit slow
* Could use a few more boss fights


If you haven't played it yet, it's well worth it.

Defense Grid 2

I picked this up on the kick starter campaign, because the first one was the best tower defense game I'd played.

The voice acting is quite good, despite what they're saying being a very thinly stretched plot. The amount of audio exposition that happens after the level is beaten, messes with the pacing. I understand why they did it -- it gives you something to listen to, while checking your scores against other people, but it makes the level that you finally beat with a gold medal require you to wait a few more minutes before moving on. I only played the game on the Hard difficulty, so by the time I finished the level, I was kinda done with it. There is also a lot of text that is given to you at the start of each level, which will not make sense for over half the game.

They added three new features to the game, and removed flying units -- which helped focus the game to a ground based defense model. The first is boost towers, which allow you to cheaply route the enemies without having to build a lot of unnecessary gun towers, and they also allow buying a boost to the tower that you build on top of it (more damage, more score for enemies killed around it, or stealth detection). It was a nice touch.

The second thing they added was upgrades that you have a chance of getting at the end of beating a level. The upgrades affect a specific tower, and you can choose which upgrade to put on each of your towers before starting a level. My personal favorite upgrade was the tachyon ones, which slow down enemies when you hit them. Second to that was the one that changes the targeting to hit the strongest unit, which was great for cannons or missile towers.

The last thing they added was the ability to purchase extensions to the map, so you have more places to build, or more paths to route the aliens. It's not always clear how it's modifying the map, but after a few quick purchases and rewinds, it all makes sense.

I'd highly recommend picking it up. It was an improvement to the first.

Also, if you're confused on the new scoring system you should check this discussion. Defense Grid 1 used a rating system of remaining currency + X per core you still have + sell value = total score. Defense Grid 2 is similar, but not as transparent. It makes sense when you think about it. You score better if you can build a more efficient defense.

The typical graph for scoring in any level.

My strategy for the last level. Surprisingly it took only 2 rewinds to get to this setup.

Dishonored

Picked up the GOTY version on Steam, but I likely won't have time to play the DLCs.

I was interested in playing another stealth game, since the last one I played was Deux Ex: Human Revolution, but it can get quite tedious, and I'm hoping to finish more than one game a month.

The controls are very fluid, the graphics well done and nicely stylized, the story is good although slightly predictable, and the voice acting is superb.

I started out going with stealth, then switched to murdering everyone to speed up the game. In a level load screen, I see a tip that says that killing people makes the world more chaotic and more rats and ghouls will exist in the new levels as a result. Hmm, must try to avoid killing people unless necessary. Also, I should avoid knocking people out near a swarm of rats, which will then eat the unconscious person...

The runes and bone charms upgrade system they have is pretty neat. You can pick up to 10 bone charms to be active, which give small perks (move faster in stealth, breaking glass is quieter, mana potions give you more mana, etc.). For the rune powers, I went with the blink ability early, and it was very useful. Also, getting the sight power has been amazing -- I can find all of the money and interactables much more quickly, so I can buy more upgrades and get through the game faster. It's almost like the Batman vision. After that I got faster movement, time dilation, possession, and shadow kills. Okay, possession is really sweet. For the levels with dogs, you can possess the dog, run through most of the level, then leave the dog and finish it up quick. Very good for getting through this quickly. Blink and the vision allow you to regen the mana spent on them naturally, but possession and slow time take more mana than you regen, so you have to keep drinking elixirs.

Also, I remapped the keys very early so that the heart, blink, and vision were 1, 2, 3. The rest of the hotkeys map to items that kill things which is less of a priority. I can also mouse wheel to them. Or just straight up kill them with my sword, which is by-far the easiest thing to do.

I started this game in April 2014, played a bit in August and just now finished it up in January. It took just a bit under 20 hours to complete the game. I'd highly recommend it for anyone that likes a good stealth game, where you don't have to play stealth. I think they force you into stealth much less than in Deux Ex: Human Revolution.